EN 354— Love, Gender, and Spirituality in Early Modern Literature


     The concept of "true love" was developed during the late Middle Ages and Early Modern periods, and today it is a basic operational truth of contemporary culture. Literature of the Early Modern Period is often about love. Both the canonical male authors and the newly recovered English and European women authors of the period write frequently about love. Our current ideas about "true love" have their origins in these writers.

      The focusing question for this course is simple:   What is the relationship between our concepts of "true love" and our concepts of "masculine" and "feminine"?   For "masculine" and "feminine," whether we like it are not, are still the basic gender constructs of both today's and yesterday's culture.

     The course is organized by types of characters. In general, these types follow the plot line of Spenser's epic book about love and marriage, which is one of our main texts. (How convenient!) But these types, and their variations, are easy to find also in the other writers we study in this course: Louise Labé, Shakespeare, Vittoria Colonna, Petrarch, Mary Wroth, Hélisènne de Crenne, John Donne, Queen Elizabeth, and Katherine Philips among them.

          Do these character types endure as our current stereotypes for gender?
          Should "true love" conform to gender stereotypes? Can it ever transcend them?
          What is the relationship between spirituality in love, and gender?

     These are some of the questions we will be exploring in this course. Every year each class can be expected to reach a different conclusion, differently nuanced.

Course Requirements:

Three interpretive papers, joint leadership of one class (using ideas from a critical article), regular class attendance, daily microthemes or reading quizzes.